Whole Transcriptome Analysis of Hypertension Induced Cardiac Injury Using Deep Sequencing

Abstract

Background/aims: Hypertension plays a critical role in the cardiac inflammation and injury. However, the mechanism of how hypertension causes the cardiac injury at a molecular level remains to be elucidated.

Methods: RNA-Seq has been demonstrated to be an effective approach for transcriptome analysis, which is essential to reveal the molecular constituents of cells and tissues. In this study, we investigated the global molecular events associated with the mechanism of hypertension induced cardiac injury using RNA-Seq analysis.

Results: Our results showed that totally 1,801 genes with different expression variations were identified after Ang II infusion at 1, 3 and 7 days. Go analysis showed that the top 5 high enrichment Go terms were response to stress, response to wounding, cellular component organization, cell activation and defense response. KEGG pathway analysis revealed the top 5 significantly overrepresented pathways were associated with ECM-receptor interaction, focal adhesion, protein digestion and absorption, phagosome and asthma. Moreover, protein-protein interaction network analysis indicated that ubiquitin C may play a key role in the processes of hypertension-induced cardiac injury.

Conclusion: Our study provides a comprehensive understanding of the transcriptome events in hypertension-induced cardiac pathology.